What lies behind dramatic rise in young Scots with mental health conditions, and why it should worry us
It has been described as a crisis. But what lies behind the dramatic rise in young Scots reporting mental health conditions?
Data from the census shows 617,100 people in Scotland said they had a mental health issue in the 2022 survey – 11.3 per cent of the population, up from 4.4 per cent in 2011.
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The jump was driven by a stark rise in mental health issues among young people. In 2011, just 2.5 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24 reported such an issue, compared to 15.4 per cent in 2022.
Matthias Schwannauer, professor of clinical psychology at Edinburgh University, said this is already having an impact.
Destigmatisation
Asked why there has been such an increase, he told The Scotsman: "That's obviously the million pound question, isn't it? We do quite a bit of work around that, and I think there are a few arguments. I'm not sure we really, now, have robust enough evidence to say one is more true than the other. It's probably a mixture of all of them. A big, big component is the destigmatisation of mental health."
He said young people are "a lot more prepared to talk about mental health difficulties and neurodevelopmental difficulties than the previous generation".
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Hide AdHe added: "Even people in their early twenties, mid twenties, are a lot more hesitant to talk about their mental health than their younger counterparts. So a big part, I think, is effective destigmatisation of mental health - that it's a lot more acceptable to talk about those needs and to make them known. People will be much more willing to endorse those items on a survey or to seek help or whatever it is.”
It’s not social media
Professor Schwannauer said another argument is that social media is to blame. This certainly features in the political debate about the increase.
"But that's been debunked,” he added. “There have been a few studies that show very low correlations between social media use and mental health, so it's not social media's fault, or the way young people tend to spend their lives."
Existential insecurity
Wider, socio-economic uncertainties should be taken into account, however. Professor Schwannauer said teenagers “feel a lot less secure about their future when we compare it to people in their early and mid twenties”.
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Hide AdHe added: "There's climate change and the feeling that the generation of their elders are not doing anything about it. There's job insecurity. Young people now believe that they won't be able to have their own home or secure employment.
"So there's a lot more sort of existential insecurity than people in their early twenties have, whether that's realistic or not, but that's again been fairly robustly demonstrated."


Scale of increase down to reporting
The consultant clinical psychologist said he believes the de-stigmatisation of mental health has had the biggest effect. It is simply “far more acceptable for that generation to seek help, to talk about it, to declare those difficulties”.
He added: "It's all over the school curriculum, it's been quite effective in that respect. I personally don't believe that the actual incidence has changed by that degree."
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Hide AdProfessor Schwannauer said reported mental health conditions were previously less common in young people than in adults.
“It basically took you until your twenties, thirties until you were able to admit that something might be wrong and you needed help,” he said. "People are now doing that much earlier, as you've seen from those figures, and as I've said, it's reflected in other surveys of similar methodologies.
"Young people now have a much higher prevalence of mental health difficulties than the older generation. So there's been a flip, and I think that's more to do with reporting and recognition."
How should society respond, and should we be worried?
The academic said there is “a clear sense that our mental health services are completely inadequate at the moment”.
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Hide AdHe added: “They are weighed towards adult need, and they completely neglect young people and adolescents' mental health needs. It's incredibly difficult to get help."
The first step, therefore, has to be to look at service provision, he said. Meanwhile, there should also be more of a focus on preventative measures.
"We should do far more in schools, or even pre-school education around mental health, and give people much better skills to deal with those difficulties than we currently do,” he said. “There's hardly any effective preventative mental health programmes in schools, and I think that is one of the major gaps."
In the past, Professor Schwannauer argued, people may have struggled on, ultimately failing to reach their potential, but without an awareness of their mental health.
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Hide Ad"If you are recognising your difficulties and you don't get the help you feel you need, then the effect is much more negative than that,” he said.
"It's a kind of stiff upper lip approach versus a kind of ‘nobody is meeting my needs’, which has a much more profound impact on the adolescent.
"There are some projections that this will have a major socio-economic impact on our society, that basically up to a quarter of a generation will not be able to reach their potential because their mental health needs are not met.
"And I don't think that's just made up because young people are more sensitive or more open about it - it's also the reality of actually then not being able to access support when you feel you need it.
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Hide Ad"So the impact of not getting support when you feel you need it is very different from the impact of not feeling you need support, even though you have the same level of functioning, if that makes sense.
"So yeah, I do think we should worry about it, and I think we're already seeing an impact in universities of young people not achieving as well as the previous generation post-Covid. And I think we see an impact on the labour market as well."
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